Summer is a three-month symphony that nature offers up to celebrate the beauty of the world – she gives of herself to us color and flavor, changing the tones through each movement. In the beginning, the berries punctuate the markets and then also my breakfast. Strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, currants, oh how I love them all. I almost think the produce alone could make summer my most treasured season. But now we are nearing the end (as the fresh chanterelles cue us to the soon-approaching Autumn, less than a month away!) and it’s worth appreciating the current chorus of tomatoes, peaches, and plums. This meal is to enjoy those tomatoes and chanterelles, marrying Summer and Autumn together in an easy one-dish dinner.
Continue reading A Pasta to Remember Summer By
Welcome to the next installment of Gluten Free Substitutions here on Jenn Cuisine! We are now really getting into the nitty gritty of gluten free ingredients, last week covering binding agents, and this week moving on to the starches. I think you’ll find this week is a bit easier, less complicated chemistry, hopefully  The binding agents really did need chemistry though, because their main purpose in GF baking is to replace the missing properties of gluten. Starches also can have some binding properties, albeit to a lesser extent. I promise to keep the chemistry a bit less this week…we’ll see how I do 
Typically isolated starches, mostly or completely devoid of protein content and almost flavorless, can dissolve in water when heated, which is great for sauces that you want to be thickened, but you don’t want any flavors from the flour – or maybe you want a clear gravy. Flours often have some starch content but also have other things as well (like protein!). Often in GF baking recipes there is a starch listed in the ingredients, so I thought it’d be good to take a look at exactly what that starch part is – is there a reason for using a pure starch in your GF flour mix? What exactly is the purpose of starch anyways? Here, let’s take a look at two extremes – tapioca starch and white corn flour – (And yes, I have a beaker for a measuring cup, I am a full chemistry nerd!). Tapioca starch is clearly a starch, where as the white corn flour is indeed a flour. Corn does contain starch, but it has to be extracted out of the corn to get pure cornstarch. Here, I’m just talking about the flour – just finely ground up corn.
Continue reading GF Substitutions Part VII: All About Starches
Gazpacho has always been one of my summer loves. Just take ripe summer produce, throw in the processor, purée and enjoy. I committed the ultimate gazpacho sin when I first made it on my own, using *gasp!* canned tomatoes, but I was a poor grad student and it wasn’t summertime – I will say now never do that, ever. Wait for beautiful fresh tomatoes, it’s worth it. Gazpacho is often my choice when I go out to eat as well – there is just something so refreshing about the blend of cucumbers and tomatoes together, that even when it’s so hot out that you feel like you’re going to start melting like that ice cream cone the kid walking down the street is enjoying, you can take a few loud slurps with the spoon and instantly cool off a few degrees (and when it’s that icky out no one minds a few loud slurps anyways).
When I heard about the existence of white gazpacho from Green Kitchen Stories (GKS), I was immediately intrigued – I mean, where would gazpacho be without all of those fresh summer tomatoes?? I wasn’t really that skeptical though, because it looked mouthwatering – go check out their pictures, and you’ll understand. I immediately knew that I wanted to make this, and so I did what anyone does nowadays – I googled blogs for “white gazpacho”, and picked one on the first page that looked yummy. I still am pretty lacking in the cookbook department, and so the vast interwebs are basically my very large cookbook. It’s really not such a bad way to be. I love my cookbooks, but they are all in the U.S., an ocean away, and I just cannot bring myself to either A) pay to ship a bunch of books over the ocean or B) buy them all over again. Besides, the interwebs can be a great resource if you are able to recognize a good recipe out there. And the one I came across looked amazing.
Continue reading Gazpacho Blanco
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